How am I supposed to consolidate my power if the market doesn't crash so I can purchase residential and commercial real estate at bargain prices? Every third restaurant and business on Las Olas was shuttered in 2009, the buildings sold for next to nothing. Today there's one after another—Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Bentley, Maserati—parked on the street in front of those same buildings, all the while, Steve B. and I enjoy that coal fired pizza! /s
Don't know why you're downvoted, that such possibilities are allowed in a completely made up system that can be changed at any time to better society, and not just ~10,000 people across the world, is a gross indictment of the current system.
All neoliberalism has done is made us more alienated, privatized the public commons, destroyed the environment, and hasten income inequality to levels that were worse than the gilded age.
If something doesn't change soon... we'll you can use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
I'll see if I can dig it up, but I remember reading that on average, under democratic presidencies going back to FDR, the economy in general performs better than it does under a republican presidency. If I'm remembering right, it's not as simple as mere ideological differences because there has been changes within the parties in those intervening ~75 years but the trend still holds.
Carter has good employment, but terrible inflation making everyone poor in miserable. His Fed appointee, Paul Volcker raises interest rates, kills inflation, puts the country in recession, and drives unemployment up during Reagan's first years in office. Carter's job numbers look better than they should, and Reagan's worse, unless you look at the bigger picture.
Wasn't trying to be political, just making an observation that 4 years is probably too short of a time to credit policy changes within a single administration.
I mean, part of this is just math. If a government spends more, it’s literally injecting money into the economy, so of course you get more jobs and growth in the short term. That spending is the jobs. If you tighten spending to cut waste or rebalance the books, growth slows and jobs shrink, but that’s kind of the tradeoff when you’re trying to fix long-term issues.
Over the last few decades, neither party has really cared about deficits anyway. Everyone’s been spending, just at different speeds. The real question isn’t “who creates more jobs,” it’s whether the spending is efficient, sustainable, and actually creates long-term value. Eventually the bills come due, interest costs rise, and priorities shift from growth to just keeping the lights on.
So yeah, Democrats tend to show stronger job numbers, but spending more will almost always do that. Whether it’s good spending is a separate debate. Budget discipline isn’t partisan, it’s just basic economics.
Republican administrations have been creating way more debt than Democrats', so I don't think your point holds. What matters is where the tax money is going, and Democrats seem to be divesting a larger share to the working class than the Republicans overall, even if both have been mostly allocating it to the owning class.
That’s unless you have a Congress that lets the President usurp the pose of the purse that should be theirs and Supreme Court that rubber stamps everything he does
There are many marginally employable swing voters who vote Republican when they have jobs and the Democrats in charge ask for taxes, then vote Democratic when they get put out of work and need a social safety net.
CES establishment payroll survey monthly change averages is quite the choice of stats lol.
JOLTS is where stress shows first. Openings fall,[1] hiring slows,[2] quits drop,[3] and layoffs rise later.[4] Biden in particular shows the weakness of your provided stats.
Nothing happened in 2020 to affect this chart I'm sure. I would expect nothing less from the publication that falsely claimed Russians hacked into the US energy grid before an election.
It apparently does when one major party is full of destructionists who have had much success at politicizing everything, including a lot of what used to just be basic core American values.
Anyone implicated by the Epstein files should go to jail. That can remain true while also not being relevant to a discussion of which party's economic policy has historically performed better.
It means they're both servants of Israel. Israel is very much 'there' and not the United States of America. America needs a Declaration of Independence from Israel.
Post WW2 was a time of labor scarcity the US benefited from - but eventually that went away with global competition. The tech boom years were another labor scarcity time, and that’s also going away.
Both these times were plausible ways of entering the middle class.
What does economic theory say should happen to labor when scarcity ends but capital is strong? Does the economy expand until there’s more labor demand? Or will structural and monopolistic problems cause capital to benefit while suppressing wages - making us all serfs?
Any system based on exponential growth will have almost all people become serfs as even if their capital grows it falls behind the growth of older capital
If it’s federal government employment that is dropping, or illegal alien jobs dropping, then some will view it positively (I’ve seen this perspective advanced on x.com).
As it turns out, no one wants to invest in infrastructure when all the inputs are going to be tariffed to oblivion. All else equal why invest in USA when you could invest somewhere where you can import the needed inputs much cheaper? Protectionism isn't enough to overcome losing access to world markets.
Eventually the protected industries will be totally disconnected from global markets causing them to lose global competitiveness, to the point they cannot even compete with the black market markups. And then you are maga, er mega, fucked.
I foresee something closer to a proportional increase of investment in all the remaining accessible markets, as US relative attractiveness decreases, rather than it moving to a specific other place.
So basically, everywhere else, proportionally. Even markets that have worse import/export restrictions, will still have relative changes in their attraction.
These perspectives bother me a lot, because I want to invest passively, but if people are out there thinking like that, maybe nothing is priced right...
What does "priced right" even mean? For whom? When a public company makes billions in profits by selling insanely overpriced hardware, then that's "priced right" for the shareholders.
When a supermarket gives out 25% discount stickers to use, then the price of the good is closer to being priced right for the consumer, as long as you apply the sticker. There is, of course, no reason to assume that the supermarket would operate at a loss or close to cost. These 25% are already priced in and anyone not using the stickers is paying extra.
Nothing has been priced right ever since they've (the collective of anyone willing to sell something) figured out that they can ask for however-much people are willing to pay, which is quite more than what MY FELLOW HUMANS would need to pay.
For everyone else, who aren't willing to pay deliberately inflated prices, there's usually always some form of discount for some product, somewhere to be found.
In the context of investing there is a correct price for financial assets that is given by trading everything back to dollars in the present. There is one remaining parameter (the exchange rate between future payouts on different dates, the "discount rate"), but all the subjectivity reduces to that one number.
However if everyone is deluded about what the future payouts of different insturments will be, you can get $10 for $1 in one place and $0.001 for $1 in another (given that in both cases the influence weighted participants think they're selling you a dollar). That invalidates the picture of reducing the unknowns to the discount rate.
In your examples, you're talking about goods and services, which have different values to different people. They have an equilibrium price but as you say, that's not the "right price for everyone," like there is for say a bond.
Well those are incredibly ignorant and mostly likely strongly biased beliefs. When I worked for NASA and the DoE, I was surrounded by the most competent, hard-working, productive people I've ever known. Silicon Valley engineers are a joke compared to government engineers. Silicon valley people have newer toys and more flexible funding and no oversight, but government employees have vastly more impact and actual measurable utility. Only morons born into enough safety and security that they can be completely ignorant of how the actual world works believe the government is unnecessary and as many government jobs as possible should be deleted. The owner of that twitter platform you linked to killed several hundred thousand people last year, and again this year, and again next year, through sheer narcissistic incompetence. Is that a good source for any information at all?
Important context is January is historically the month where most layoffs are enacted. Not saying the number is insignificant, just not entirely unexpected.
You are off by several years on the interest rates, which have an 18-24 month impact. Also we have this idiotic and unlawful tariff war the US administration is currently perpetrating. But I'm certain AI is having a huge impact as well.
I'm unconvinced of the AI impact outside of the tech sector. But there's certainly a lot of uncertainty generally. Probably more senior people with reputations are in a better position but likely tougher for people with no records.
I don't have much involvement with graphic design but I agree that the impact on journalism and adjacent is pretty awful. Not sure how much is AI per se but certainly the economics have been pretty unfavorable. I'm not convinced it's just AI slop but but quantity can displace quality.
Yet housing costs keep increasing. The working class is being squeezed between employers who are suffering lost revenue and can't pay US wages, and landlords and mega-corp shareholders who won't budge on price. I foresee a slow protracted "collapse" (or really renegotiation) that will bankrupt stuck-in-the-mud billionaires (like Elon) as their means of recourse - law enforcement and the military - come under such powerful social coercion that no amount of money will stop them from siding with working-class-friendly new leadership like Mamdani, as the workers (who, despite what Elon tells himself in his robot fantasies, are still needed en masse), use their REAL voting power - moving their home to jurisdictions that are working-class-friendly.
You can blame the DNC for all the badness of Harris (the minimum badness you were able to choose in the election). You can't blame the DNC for all the difference between Kamala and Trump. That was entirely up to you.
No, DNC picking a bad candidate should be responsible for a D electoral loss, it is not responsible for Trump's electoral win. A lot of people seem to think only the DNC has agency in elections, only they should be responsible for outcomes.
No. You had a choice. I voted for Harris (who I do not like as a progressive) instead of chaos and destruction, others had the same choice. To not vote out of protest was a vote for this.
Better luck next time. ~2M voters 55+ age out every year. Can we do better? Remains to be seen.
I voted for Bernie in the primary, for Hilary; Biden; and Harris in the general elections. At no point did I think to myself "Now is the time to be an idealist about the DNC, right when we're combating fascism"
The DNC is an embarrassment, the two party system is a democratic disaster, but accelerationists? They're evil.
It's not a shock, it's a natural consequence of the rot continuing its course.
The USA is an empire founded in bloodshed and hatred, and it is only becoming more so as it decays. Until you rewrite what the USA means, this will only continue.
Migrating to a place where people can contribute more to society is both a core tenet of individual liberty and one of the most positive-sum things any human being can do.
But given that you both feign concern over visa holders' working conditions [1], while at the same time advocating for policies that lead to worse working conditions [2], perhaps you just hate freedom and were never acting in good faith in the first place.
And my point is those "half measures" have already incentivized us to offshore even more than before. Going with "full measures" will only further incentivize us to go ExAmerica.
We lobbied where we needed to. Now we're bankrolling Trump's Venezuela [0] and "Drill Baby Drill" [1] policy and the Iowa [2] and Montana GOP's [3] agricultural exports.
This is how a trade war is fought.
Policymaking is always secondary to politics. That's why I left the policy space to climb the ladder in business.
I hear that the Washington Post just fired 1/3 of all of it's reporters.
Otherwise, if so many jobs have disappeared, does that mean that my garbage company no longer needs to employ a staf on every truck to drive it and empty my trash recepticle into the truck?
https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulation_by_dispossession
Don't know why you're downvoted, that such possibilities are allowed in a completely made up system that can be changed at any time to better society, and not just ~10,000 people across the world, is a gross indictment of the current system.
All neoliberalism has done is made us more alienated, privatized the public commons, destroyed the environment, and hasten income inequality to levels that were worse than the gilded age.
If something doesn't change soon... we'll you can use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
Why? What if constantly launching foreign wars, leveraging up the financial system and running up deficits isn’t sound economic policy?
Conservative approaches tend to be…. Conservative. Which is the opposite of growth.
Over the last few decades, neither party has really cared about deficits anyway. Everyone’s been spending, just at different speeds. The real question isn’t “who creates more jobs,” it’s whether the spending is efficient, sustainable, and actually creates long-term value. Eventually the bills come due, interest costs rise, and priorities shift from growth to just keeping the lights on.
So yeah, Democrats tend to show stronger job numbers, but spending more will almost always do that. Whether it’s good spending is a separate debate. Budget discipline isn’t partisan, it’s just basic economics.
JOLTS is where stress shows first. Openings fall,[1] hiring slows,[2] quits drop,[3] and layoffs rise later.[4] Biden in particular shows the weakness of your provided stats.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSJOL
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSHIL
[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSQUL
[4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDL
The charts paint a much more precise picture on what is happening, and I actually don't see anything that strongly support it being a partisan effect.
Good for you.
Anyone implicated by the Epstein files should go to jail. That can remain true while also not being relevant to a discussion of which party's economic policy has historically performed better.
Both these times were plausible ways of entering the middle class.
What does economic theory say should happen to labor when scarcity ends but capital is strong? Does the economy expand until there’s more labor demand? Or will structural and monopolistic problems cause capital to benefit while suppressing wages - making us all serfs?
If it’s federal government employment that is dropping, or illegal alien jobs dropping, then some will view it positively (I’ve seen this perspective advanced on x.com).
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/layoffs-unemployment-jobs-econo...
Eventually the protected industries will be totally disconnected from global markets causing them to lose global competitiveness, to the point they cannot even compete with the black market markups. And then you are maga, er mega, fucked.
What markets do you have in minds? Can retail investors invest there?
So basically, everywhere else, proportionally. Even markets that have worse import/export restrictions, will still have relative changes in their attraction.
What does "priced right" even mean? For whom? When a public company makes billions in profits by selling insanely overpriced hardware, then that's "priced right" for the shareholders.
When a supermarket gives out 25% discount stickers to use, then the price of the good is closer to being priced right for the consumer, as long as you apply the sticker. There is, of course, no reason to assume that the supermarket would operate at a loss or close to cost. These 25% are already priced in and anyone not using the stickers is paying extra.
Nothing has been priced right ever since they've (the collective of anyone willing to sell something) figured out that they can ask for however-much people are willing to pay, which is quite more than what MY FELLOW HUMANS would need to pay.
For everyone else, who aren't willing to pay deliberately inflated prices, there's usually always some form of discount for some product, somewhere to be found.
However if everyone is deluded about what the future payouts of different insturments will be, you can get $10 for $1 in one place and $0.001 for $1 in another (given that in both cases the influence weighted participants think they're selling you a dollar). That invalidates the picture of reducing the unknowns to the discount rate.
In your examples, you're talking about goods and services, which have different values to different people. They have an equilibrium price but as you say, that's not the "right price for everyone," like there is for say a bond.
sigh If only the department of education was as well funded as the department of war.
My guess: heavily blue state, blue voter.
We need all these monopolies and cartels broken up so that there is a dynamic competitive environment in all sectors of the economy
Or the DNC for throwing Bernie under the bus in 2016 (he would have beaten trump)?
Maybe the two party system has grown rotten to the core
Better luck next time. ~2M voters 55+ age out every year. Can we do better? Remains to be seen.
The DNC is an embarrassment, the two party system is a democratic disaster, but accelerationists? They're evil.
I think this is usually true, but there hasn't really been a global shock of the sort we had in 2020 or 2008 or 2001.
What would you say are the salient circumstances now?
The USA is an empire founded in bloodshed and hatred, and it is only becoming more so as it decays. Until you rewrite what the USA means, this will only continue.
And I feel pointing out how a commonly repeated trope in our industry is backfiring is important.
Alternatively, you can bury your heads into the deeper and deeper hole that is being dug.
But given that you both feign concern over visa holders' working conditions [1], while at the same time advocating for policies that lead to worse working conditions [2], perhaps you just hate freedom and were never acting in good faith in the first place.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45656527
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323501
Now that they're facing consequences which we warned about (and prepped for as a result) they want to ignore it.
Brain drain somewhere is brain gain elsewhere.
We lobbied where we needed to. Now we're bankrolling Trump's Venezuela [0] and "Drill Baby Drill" [1] policy and the Iowa [2] and Montana GOP's [3] agricultural exports.
This is how a trade war is fought.
Policymaking is always secondary to politics. That's why I left the policy space to climb the ladder in business.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indias-reliance-talk...
[1] - https://www.livemint.com/companies/ongc-exxonmobil-collabora...
[2] - https://governor.iowa.gov/press-release/2025-09-16/gov-reyno...
[3] - https://www.daines.senate.gov/2026/01/20/daines-travels-to-i...
JOLTS data for January 2026 has been delayed, but don't expect those tea leaves to change your opinion about what the future holds.
Otherwise, if so many jobs have disappeared, does that mean that my garbage company no longer needs to employ a staf on every truck to drive it and empty my trash recepticle into the truck?
Do… do you not want them to do this?